Klassiske Vaniljekranse – Danish Butter Cookies

I’m sure a lot of folks are like me, who loves to eat Danish butter cookies by Kjeldsens. This was long before we have Famous Amos and Mrs Fields cookies in the malls, and even longer before Betty Crocker premixes made it to the shelves of supermarkets. I love Kjeldsens since I was a small boy, and became so addicted to them after sampling a few pieces in our very first tin given by a family friend. Precious they were, my sister and I were only allowed 2 pieces each day. And we often bickered on which to choose. The oblongish ones studded with granluated sugar was an obvious favorite. We would also be looking out for these round blue tins filled with crumbly morsels of buttery goodness whenever my mother brought us to departmental stores like Yaohan or Oriental Emporium, pestering her to buy them for us. But they were so expensive then, and personally I feel they still are! Those retail joints no longer exist, becoming ghosts of the yesteryears, but Kjeldsens is still going strong, becoming a household name and often benchmark to other Danish butter cookies that became available later.

Recently in my cyber circle of baking afficionadoes, there was a little hype over baking Danish butter cookies. That sparked a desire and brought me back to my childhood, to recreate these delicious cookies we used to enjoy so much. There were a few recipes floating around but I wasn’t exactly keen. I was more interested in Danish butter cookies made by the Danish themselves! Surely nothing can be more authentic than that? After some searching around, I found this really lovely video published on youtube, of whom I presume to be a local pastry chef demonstrating how Danish butter cookies, better known as “Vaniljekranse” in their native tongue are made. The recipe is incredibly simple, with everything being thrown into the mixer all at once. I love the French track “Le Festin” by Camille playing the background. It is from the soundtrack of one of my favorite Disney productions “Ratatouille” by the way! I love her gigantic mixer, and I love the whole “mood” of the video to show how leisurely and relaxed it can be done. Most of all, I love love love her swift and sharply executed piping skills, which I tried to replicate with my own batch of cookies 🙂

Klassiske Vaniljekranse (Danish Butter Cookies)

adapted from here (IMPORTANT UPDATE – Do remember to click on the link under “related posts” for a more updated discussion on this cookie)Ingredients

Place everything in a mixing bowl and mix evenly using a paddle attachment on the lowest speed possible.
Pipe wreaths onto greased cookie sheet or baking tray using an open star tip. I used Wilton 1M but I think the lady in the video used a smaller one
Bake in a preheated oven at 200C for 7-8 min
Leave to cool slightly before removing from cookie sheet.
Transfer cookies into airtight container after cookies are at room temperature.

It is very important to ensure all ingredients at room temperature. Using softend butter helps the ingredients to amalgamate very quickly. Do not be tempted to heat the butter over the stove to melt it. That would create a messy cookie dough that oozes butter all the time.

Using the lowest speed possible helps one to monitor the progress of the cookie dough formation so as not to overwork it. Having said that the recipe is very forgiving, with little fear of the starch glutening. If one doesn’t have a stand mixer, mix the ingredients by hand with the aid of a hard spatula. Avoid using a hand blender.
The video, vanilla/vanilin powder was used. I used vanilla paste from Nielsen Massey vanilla paste which is far more fluid. Thus, I’d increased the flour and icing sugar amount slightly to compensate. If scraped seeds from vanilla beans are used, I think it is ok to stick to the original recipe. I’d also noticed that the baked cookies could hold their shape better with the slightly increased ratio of dry to wet ingredients. But be assured that they are no less crumbly and buttery.

Having said that using good butter is very important of course. I’d used Elle et Vire Gastronomique Doux, which is essentially unsalted butter used specifically for culinary purposes and not as as a spread. It is good enough for me. One could of course go that extra mile to use Lurpark butter for a truly authentic Danish experience, but I felt that French butters do the job really well, if not better 🙂

No creaming of butter, no chilling of dough, no waiting time at all, this must surely be the easiest cookie recipe I’d attempted to date! And I must say that its one of the most delicious one too!
Have a lovely weekend ahead and if you have the time, do give this recipe a try! 🙂

aiyoh, when my mom buy those tin biscuits when we were kids, me and my siblings always fight for this shape one…..haha…now can make at home. Looks doable enough but what sort of special butter you using in the pic?

Sharon, just get something really buttery! Lurpak is authentically Danish, but I used Elle et Vire which is french. I’m sure there would be be people using other brands too. I would recommend Emborg, President or any European butter you can find over there. Just don’t use the Australian ones like greenfields or worse still… butterspreads like buttercup.

Hi there and Happy New Year! The beaters on handmixers turn really fast, thus making it more prone to overworking the dough. This can result in really hard and compact cookies in the end. A spatula gives one greater control over speed and degree of mixing, as one can easily monitor the progress of the dough coming together, stopping when all the flour had JUST being incorporated. You can read more about the making of these cookies in a recipe “update” and analysis in the link below:

Alan, I don’t have a paddle attachment. Does hand held mixer at the lowest speed work? You think its ok to just use a spatula and mix till no trace of flour? I intend to bake this tomorrow for Chinese New Year and am getting a little jittery now….Thanks for coming to my rescue!

Lovely lovely cookies! I love those raisin butter cookies in the tin, can I just use the same recipe as yours and add raisins? Any idea if I should be using a round piping tip to pipe out then? thanks!

if I am not wrong, those are not raisins but dried blackcurrants which are much smaller after dehydrating and also a tad more sourish than raisins. If you wanna make those, I would advise on chilling the dough for a few hours and cutting it after that into disks instead. the blackcurrants may get stuck in the piping bag, so piping isn’t that workable I think. Hope this is of help Let me know how your cookies turned out 🙂

Thank u for prompt reply and highlighting the part about the dried black currants! Otherwise I may have blindly used raisins instead. It’ll be my first time baking butter cookies and your pointers and tips will be so helpful. Will come back again when I get down to making them! Thank u once again! 😀

December 13, 2013 at 11:08 am

Alac

Couldn’t find dried black currants at local stores and bought dried blueberries instead. The flavor was good but the texture of the cookies was somewhat tough, not crunchy. I’m thinking I must have worked the dough a bit too many times to mix well, even though I only mixed manually with a hard spatula as I didn’t have a paddle attachment for my mixer. I didn’t have time to chill the dough and just “pinched” and placed them on the tray after mixing in the dried blueberries. If the dough looks over mixed, is it a hopeless case or does chilling the dough help make the cookies more crunchy?

December 16, 2013 at 12:31 pm

Alan (travellingfoodies)

It could be… I would really advise working the dough as little as possible.

December 17, 2013 at 12:49 pm

Alac

I tried to work as little as I could but it was tough getting the flour to mix well with the wet ingredients with too few turns of the spatula ：D should I chill the dough if it looks overworked and looks like it’s melting?

December 17, 2013 at 2:52 pm

Angie

Have tried & very crunchy, thanks for the recipes. May I know how long can I keep those cookies in the air-tight container? Think to do some for this coming Chinese New Year 🙂

You can try to do a partial substitution with cocoa powder for the plain flour, i.e 15-30 g of cocoa powder to replace an equivalent mass of plain flour. You can also add small chocolate chips to your batter. I will not encourage the use of melted chocolate directly into the batter as it would alter the moist level and cause the cookies to spread too much during baking. Hope this helps.

Thx!! May i know if i can add cornstarch/cornflour? As i want the melt-in-mouth texture

April 9, 2014 at 2:19 pm

MajaRaco

Hi Alan! Do you know if these cookies can be rolled out to use with cookie cutters? I’d like to make these and the “oblongish ones studded with granluated sugar”. I’m thinking that chilling the dough would be enough for these to keep the consistency for shaping.

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Your cookies look gorgeous! My dad had recently bought one of those blue tins filled with buttery cookies when I stumbled upon your recipe and thought that it would be a lovely idea to bake some fresh home made ones for him. Unfortunately I have failed in trying to make the dough with both attempts ending with a very dry mixture. I have mixed it as little as possible but the amount of wet mixture to dry seems overwhelmingly little. Is there anyway to incorporate more liquid into the mixture somehow? Or is my mixture too dry due to poor quality butter?

hi Iris. The butter has to be a room temperature and very very soft when you prepare the cookie dough. And try to pipe in smaller quantities. You may want to refer to this update I wrote, as well as a consolidation of the pointers and reflections made on the various ingredients used. Many of my friends have made it successfully, and I’m sure you would be able to as well 🙂 https://travelling-foodies.com/2012/12/25/vaniljekranse-a-long-update/

I tried the recipe again today and left the butter out for a good 8 hours before touching it this time and it worked! And boy are they delicious! I guess I was just too impatient last time (but who could resist with your lovely pictures).
Unfortunately I didn’t keep a close enough eye on the first batch so they turned out a little burnt on the bottom, but still delicious. I can’t wait for my family to try them. Thank you for a the wonderful recipe and for replying to my sad first attempt (:

I’m glad it worked out for you finally. Piping in smaller batches definitely help. Except for meringue based ingredients, I usually don’t fill up the piping bag more than half full. it allows much better control as well during piping, apart from requiring a smaller force. Thanks again for trying out the recipe 🙂

My cookies do not have strong butter flavour even when it is fresh baked. And it become worse, that is no butter flavour at all after i keep the cookies for 2 weeks in air tight container.
Is it due to the butter quality? I use Anchor brand.

I don’t use Australian butters like Anchor. They don’t smell and taste as good as the European butters like lurpak, president or echire. Golden churn is a good butter to try for these cookies. And the good thing is they can be stored at room temperature. Get a can and try. 🙂